


The Travel Almanac

by Luckynumbers124109



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 02:18:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19189921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luckynumbers124109/pseuds/Luckynumbers124109
Summary: Above the British countryside, 3:06 AM, August 29, 2018, James Potter





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Above the British countryside, 3:06 AM, August 29, 2018, James Potter

A small dark figure skidded across the wind currents. The cold had bit his fingers and nose and tinged them pink. The moon was full and bright. Soft moonlight guided him back to the mansion. Wind whipped his deep red hair against his face like a thousand small blades; but he didn’t mind because ten galleons sat heavy in his pocket, a malicious grin spread across his face. His eyes glinted against the starlight like a sword in the sunset.  
James had snuck out around 12:30 AM to go to Christopher Brown’s house for dueling club. Before even stepping foot on the ground he knew that flying home with pockets of galleons was set in stone.  
After the seventh match no one dared challenge him again, he thought they were cowards. Of course they backed down for good reason; all his summers were spent reading and practicing spells, hexes, charms, jinxes, anything, just to be better than his father. Studying so he could have an excuse not to visit Teddy in college.  
Apparently his grounding was not working because his Yajirushi 250 took him high in the clear cold air, he felt free. But, he somehow knew at least two seething people would be waiting for him when he got home.  
Instead of riding up to the estate like a dumbass, he touched down nimbley in the trees next to it. James shrunk the money and broom and covered them both up with his invisibility cloak. His father had thought the cloak was in his vault at gringotts. He was wrong.  
The night was cold and vast, the stars shimmered like frost. He waited a couple minutes admiring the spectacle, leaning against an old oak, just thinking. After hiding his possessions he opened the door to his fate.


	2. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yokohama, Japan, 9:02 am, June 21st, 2018, Sonoe Chang

Golden light streamed into the kitchen from in between the houses and cherry trees. Warmth spread wherever it touched down, much to the disdain of Sonoe’s mother who was trying to type something for work and the glare made her laptop hot to the touch.  
It was a beautiful day. A few puffy white clouds against a blue, blue, sky. She imagined bunnies and snails and letters floating about the sky, looking down on the city and airplanes and smiling. Slight winds cooled the overheating girl on the balcony of the apartment. She was in the shade of a giant swaying tree that partially obscured the view of nosy neighbors, but did not hinder her from still keeping watch over the city from her three-story perch even with the modern apartments around her.  
She sat on a colorful beach chair that had never been used, little delicate yellow and blue flowers she bought surrounded her. She drank her steaming lemon tea and ate her crunchy apple and all was well. Drops of honied morning sunlight warmed her short black hair. She was lost in her thoughts as per usual, letting the petite birds and bugs drift her heart farther and farther away from reality, becoming loose and unbridled.  
All of her chores were already done to make way for the real meat of today's productivity. She had washed her clothes and hung them up to dry on the line outside so the smell of fresh laundry occasionally wafted her way. She had done her allotted amount of summer practice work, which wasn’t too bad considering she liked doing it, then corrected it and gone over her false answers with her mom. She did the dishes, cleaned her room, fed the cat, then proceed to take a shower and have breakfast.  
Today was the day. A full pale moon was still visible in the sky.  
She had been obsessed with making a familiar since she found out about them. A familiar is a small creature who helps you with things, it can learn and remember things and does what you tell it to, for the most part anyways. They have been passed from generation to the next, mostly in east European and east Asian countries, granted they aren’t destroyed manually. They fully embody their creator if created correctly, moving parts and months of preparation are involved, a fun challenge for potions majors such as herself. Three potions, a mold, memory extractions, and important memorabilia.  
In old times they used to just kill an animal and put their soul inside of it. It has been outlawed in nearly all countries since then. If you were to be caught with a reanimated animal in Japan, you would most likely never be allowed to use magic ever again.  
You can make familiars out of basically anything but it takes a real cook to understand how to make one. Sonoe’s mom wasn’t actually going to help her with the potion because she had decided to go into work on a Saturday for overtime. Per usual. Sonoe had actually gotten the recipe when she had gone to The Collection, but that’s a different story.  
She would make her physical form of her familiar out of ½ pound of clay, a special potion she brewed last night, lots of yarn, stuffing, a little fur, and felt- all warm brown colors. Sonoe had thought of this for a long time now, the body would be about the size of a bunny, have cat like features with cute toe beans and a long tail and pretty ears, it would have sturdy hands like a monkey or possum to carry and write things. Nimble little fingers to help open anxiety pills, and make meals for inattentive minds. It was all mapped out in her head, along with in her gilmore she had carefully tucked away.  
She imagined the ingredients of her familiars soul. Pressed cherry blossom petals from last spring, two long back hairs from new years when she cut her hair, two lavender stocks from her class trip, a fortune from a fortune cookie that came true, a small drawing from her friend that she loves- totoro grinning, a small jade pebble from a shrine when she was small, her old metro card that brought her so many fun places, a sticker she got in disney world of peter pan, an origami frog her brother made for her, an ice blue gum wrapper from her crush, Silantro (because it smells so good), and last a golden hair ribbon.  
Last would come the mind. The mind was most temperamental as it came from the creator, these memories can easily corrupted. Sonoe had been collecting good dreams and hopes for a few months making sure they were pure pastel colors. She had already gone through them all, the ones where she overcame strife or all her hard work paid off were her favorites.  
But she would wait. Until she saw her mother out the door and down the street, maybe then she would start. Or she would wait an extra twenty minutes to be safe.  
Nothing would go wrong. She had been convincing herself to do this for months. This would not only benefit her, but it would soothe her mother's troubles. Once the process was all over she could help her mother finally, maybe they could even get closer.  
\--------------------------  
Late in the night Sonoe's mother always came home. She was frazzled and her body movements were sharp and wound from frantic stress, her eyes twitched wide but hair had not moved one hair since the morning. Today was particularly awful for her but of course she wasn’t allowed to say anything about it. And she would never. She could only express her emotions in actions now.  
Sonoe never blamed her for the things she did under such stress, some people just couldn’t handle stress or sorrow or their true love dying at the hands of Voldemort. She was the same exact ravenclaw girl who still believed she needed to be better. And that would never be separated from her soul. So when she killed Heidi she only felt hollow melancholy.  
When she was a child and her mother had a fit like this she would scream scream scream. She wouldn’t know why her mother would do such horrible things. Throw glasses at the wall, scream until she left, not uttering a word for days or not feeding her. All that but keeping her so far under her thumb to ensure she would not be hurt by the outside world, unknown to the ways that she herself was scaring her child.  
Sonoe was born prematurely causing respiratory problems that plagued her throughout childhood making her parents overprotective of everything she did. As well as being thin and weak, Sonoe was born with extremely weak magical power.  
Her parents couldn’t handle her as a child, not because she was temperamental, no, she was very patient and quiet, but because she had an older sister perfect in every way and they couldn’t handle that Sonoe couldn’t be fixed. They brought her to herbalists, tarot readers, potion makers, muggle doctors, surgeons, yogi masters, charlatans, too many places that they gave up. Or her father did, he took Sonoe’s older sister and ran off to England and never looked back. Dumping their sick child onto a single mother suffering herself.  
As she grew Sonoe’s respiratory problems had gotten better. She wasn’t allowed in most of the major Chinese magic schools because of her inability to do magic, so she went to a specialization school where she learned without the help of wands.  
When she was twelve she began experimenting on her own to find cures for her ailments. She was good at relieving sharp pains and soothing tense areas with these secret potions, they came in creamy pale blues and watery orange blossom tonics that helped her force down the other pills and poisons she was prescribed.  
Her mother really only got worse as Sonoe got better, as the medical bills and school tuition piled up, crescendoing in debilitating debt for a single mother. So Sonoe became more forgiving and a kinder girl, all she aspired to do was help her mother. She made coffee with elixirs to give her clearance of mind but that was it. Cho was not going to be cared for, because she had herself and that’s all she needed.  
Cho Chang was a strong believer that she could get past anything without the help of others.  
Sonoe accepted that but did not let it stop her from achieving her means. So when she tried to hide her familiar able to finally do something to help, her mother destroyed it. With a flick of her wand and a single word, chunks of Heidi slathered the walls. Sonoe does not go against her mother, ever. Never to her face. So she stayed, grieving in silence for her mother. Hot tears dripped down her cheeks in the cold of the darkness.


End file.
